Ron Boszhard admits that the young viewers of his program Zappsport, in which he forms a duo with Britt Dekker, are being cheated. “Yes, this is true. We wanted to make it more exciting.”
Distrust of the media is increasing and that is partly fueled by celebrities and programs that are very fake are. Nothing is what it seems on television: reality is manipulated all the time. And that starts with children’s programming. This is how the viewers of Zappsport are cheated hard.
“Huh, 2-1?!”
The smallest things are manipulated to make things more exciting. In last weekend’s broadcast, for example, a football duel was played between two girls’ teams; one from the Netherlands and one from Belgium. The Flemish girls didn’t make it; it became 4-0. Too boring, the makers thought, and that is why they distorted reality.
In the TV show by Ron Boszhard and Britt Dekker, it was pretended that it suddenly became 2-1 through a penalty, so there is also a foul – read: not a good example – staged. How was all this discovered? A celebrity was present at the recordings, because the daughter of Radio 538 megastar Rick Romijn played football.
“Total walkover!”
Rick thinks it’s bizarre. “They lost 4-0, but on TV they act as if it had become 2-1 and then it became very tense, but it was a walkover! Those Belgians were not involved”, he exclaims on the radio.
How did the recordings go? “The game is over, the girls go to the side and then the cameraman comes and says: ‘We have to go to the penalty area and then we will pretend that a penalty is being caused.’ That is done. The first misses Belgium, but the second goes in. The Belgians happy, but it was 4-0!”
Ron confesses
Ron confesses to the viewer cheating. “I totally agree with Rick. If it is 4-0 then it must be 4-0, but what happened… It was indeed a walk-over, but those young girls had come all the way from Belgium.”
He continues: “Then we said to the girls of the Dutch national team: ‘Listen, would you mind if the Belgians also go home with one point?’ We wouldn’t have done it if the girls had all said, ‘No, 4-0 is 4-0.’”
Girl floors
Isn’t it actually a little not done to determine as adults that the girls had to stage an offense? A little, of course. “The girls even drew lots to see who would floor one of the Belgian girls,” he confesses. Finally: “Yes, we tried to make it more exciting.”
Incidentally, these recordings were also the place where Rick discovered that Britt is very arrogant in real life. For example, she refused to take a picture with a number of girls at the end of the day.